“Nvidia has largely ignored Apple’s Macs when it comes to its high-end graphics cards,” Ian Paul reports for PCWorld. “That’s about to change now that Apple is on the road to Mac Pro redemption — the company recently announced that a modular high-end Mac will return in 2018 [sic].”

MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully “modular high-end Mac will return in 2018.” In reality, all Apple has said so far is “not this year.” Hopefully, that means “very early 2018.” Even more hopefully, Apple will get up off their collective thumb and surprise us with a new Mac Pro this autumn.

“As Nvidia promised during the announcement of the Titan Xp last week, a beta macOS driver is here: version number 378.05.05.05f01,” Paul reports. “Although the driver notes don’t mention it, this is the beta driver that supports the Titan Xp and all GeForce 1000 series graphics cards for Macs running macOS Sierra.”

“This release has major implications for legacy Mac Pro, Hackintosh, and eGPU users. It means that we can now use the latest Nvidia hardware to drive our machines graphically,” Jeff Benjamin reports for 9to5Mac. “It means taking a relatively underpowered computer like the 13-inch 2016 MacBook Pro, and running games at high settings with respectable frame rates.”

“We plan on testing out the beta drivers more extensively in the future, but for quick testing purposes, we decided to try powering our 13-inch MacBook Pro with the Pascal-based GTX 1050 Ti,” Benjamin reports. “What we found was an encouraging sneak peek at the potential of eGPU setups on the Mac.”

Note 32GB Quad Core Xeon with Discrete NVIDIA 2 GB GPU and a 3 year warranty for a little more than a 16GB Dual Core i7 with Intel Integrated Graphics and a 1 year warranty.

WTF Tim, Jony, (can’t Innovate, my ass) Phil? The HP – roughly the size of a Mac mini- can also be opened without tools for upgrades- CPUs range from Core i3 all the way to Xeons and GPUs from Intel Iris – NVIDIA Discrete. 3 Display Ports, Phil, wonder what they are for?

The fanboys defending Apple’s overpriced and outdated BS have no apparent idea of what can be bought from the competition while Apple works on adding Balloons to iMessage. Apple is selling you yesterday’s technology at tomorrow’s prices.

Tim, why not give H-P a call and let them ship this with macOS on it- they already offer it with Windows Pro 64 or 2 flavors of LINUX? Vaporware is what you were peddling to Gruber last week.

Tim Cook could give the OK and H-P could be selling macOS versions of H-Ps pro HW in very little time. It is exactly what the Pro and high end market wants- upgradeability and high performance.
Not in 1-2 years, maybe. They could make it happen by WWDC. Hell could freeze over twice.

Aye laddie, but you can be sure they be payin’more attention NOW. I realize for my pro stuff the PC model of “whatever you want” cannot be beat. Apple self-imposed and customer denied restrictions are for the birds. As is the excessive premium prices for which the 2013 Mac Pro was a premium example (as also not a premium device). Apple better stop all the non-upgradeable nonsense and get serious.

yesterday i installed a 6 core Xeon into my second Cheese Grater which has a 980 it installed. Booted up without problem. Factory new chip cost me just over a $100 . this will give close to Cylinder 6 core speed and with the 980 about 3 times GPU for certain tasks (about 3 times GPU of the new MBP as well).

Still I’m Glad for the new drivers, the 1000 series cards are good.

Typing this on another upgraded Cheeser. Will tide me over until the new iMacs or MPs come out.
BIG monitors (I’ve got two linked) for screen real estate so more windows, palettes are visible, fast machines are a real time saver.

The problem with the Mac Pro Workstations (Cheesegrater)is that parts are starting to dry up except for recovered from dead units. I had to replace my power supply last year.

I am seriously considering ordering one of the HP Z2 Minis with Xeon and setting it up as a Hackintosh. I will simply not buy any more sealed up overpriced Apple stuff. When I drop 3-4K on a new computer I expect it tp last longer than 2 years. What Apple has been trying to do is force Mac users into a shorter life cycle for their HW.

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s the difference between a new and 2 year old computer was huge, these days not so much.

The HP has 4 DisplayPorts, 4 USB 3 and 2 USB C ports, 3.5 GHz Xeon Quad Core, NVIDIA GPU,32GB RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth in a pluggable module (can be upgraded) all in a 8.5″ Square by 2.5″ high unit.

keep us posted if you go HP hack. I want to know how it went. the raw specs are awesome.
thanks.

(I always wanted to buy a new MP but Apple didn’t build one I wanted after the Cylinder (hey Apple you got people like me who want to spend money!) . I knew the Cylinder GPU would be an issue and Thunderbolt 2 won’t do for external GPU ).